Vanessa Frias-Martinez

Vanessa Frias-Martinez is an assistant professor in the iSchool and an affiliate assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. She also leads the Urban Computing Lab at UMD.

Her research areas are data-driven behavioral modeling and spatio-temporal data mining. Frias-Martinez research focuses on the use of large-scale ubiquitous data to model the interplay between human mobility patterns, social networks and the physical environment. Specifically, Frias-Martinez develops methodologies to model and predict human behaviors in different contexts as well as tools to aid decision makers in areas such as poverty, natural disasters or urban planning.

Before coming to UMD, she spent five years at Telefonica Research developing algorithms to analyze mobile digital traces. Frias-Martinez completed internships at Google and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

She is also a recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and the La Caixa Fellowship.

Frias-Martinez received her doctorate in computer science from Columbia University in 2008.